Play Date

Playing outside used to be normal: hopscotch, kickball, even that hoop-and-stick thing in old movies. These days, though, sometimes things get so hectic we forget to make time just to play -- whether for ourselves or for our children.

The Play Pledge aims to change all that. Sponsored by the International Play Equipment Manufacturers Association (but still a good idea), the concept is we sign a contract with our kids (but I think it could be modified to be with ourselves) to get outside and have some fun.

Play builds intellectual, social and physical skills. Oh, and it's fun. So let's get out there and play!

Count on It

Remember playing Chutes and Ladders when you were little? Turns out you were boosting your math skills.

A thesis out of Carnegie Mellon University states playing a linear number board game for about one hour increased low-income five-and-a-half-year-olds' math proficiency. Carried through years of schooling, the authors suggest math improvements due to games could make a significant difference for the students.

"The present findings demonstrated that the benefits of playing number board games include enhanced understanding of numerical magnitudes, improved counting, and improved numeral identification," the study stated. "These gains are not only important in themselves but also seem likely to increase children’s ability to acquire further numerical information."

Playing a color board game (Candy Land, say) wasn't associated with a math skills boost.

"The finding that middle-income children have more experience playing board games in general, and Chutes and Ladders in particular, increased the plausibility of the related hypothesis that variations in experience with such games is one source of differences between the numerical knowledge of children from low- and middle-income backgrounds," the study added.

The full study is at: http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~siegler/ramsieg-inpress1.pdf.

Breastfeeding Associated with Smarter Kids

Breastfeeding exclusively during the first year of life has been associated with an increase in a child’s intelligence by first grade, a large randomized trial in Belarus found.

For more on this boob-happy news, click: http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/GeneralPediatrics/tb/9342